George Eliot

22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880

Standard Name: Eliot, George

Birth Name: Mary Anne Evans

Nickname: Polly

Nickname: Pollian

Self-constructed Name: Mary Ann Evans

Self-constructed Name: Marian Evans

Self-constructed Name: Marian Evans Lewes

Pseudonym: George Eliot

Pseudonym: Felix Holt

Married Name: Mary Anne Cross

GE , one of the major novelists of the nineteenth century and a leading practitioner of fictional realism, was a professional woman of letters who also worked as an editor and journalist, and left a substantial body of essays, reviews, translations on controversial topics, and poetry.

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Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Literary responses	Jane Hume Clapperton	A review by Vernon Lee for The Academy was similarly positive, calling JHC 's book an important,valuable, and noble production, whose primary contribution was its originality: without being actually original in any separate...
Literary responses	Caroline Scott	This was one of the white neck-cloth Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”. A Victorian Art of Fiction, edited by John Charles Olmsted, Garland, 1979, pp. 277-98. 293 or Evangelical sub-species of fiction which George Eliot distinguished in her notorious attack on the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”. A Victorian Art of Fiction, edited by John Charles Olmsted, Garland, 1979, pp. 277-98. 279 in Silly Novels...
Literary responses	Dinah Mulock Craik	Some felt she wrote too much too fast. Elizabeth Gaskell commented in a letter of 1851, I wish she had some other means of support than writing, which must be pumped up instead of bubbling...
Literary responses	Anne Thackeray Ritchie	ATR bridges the gap between the Victorians and the moderns. Leslie Stephen found her irritating, and harshly criticized her Dictionary of National Biography entry on Elizabeth Barrett Browning , but noted that everyone who could...
Literary responses	Frances Hodgson Burnett	The American reviews were highly flattering. The reviewer for the Boston Transcript could think of no more powerful work from a woman's hand in the English language, not even George Eliot at her best. qtd. in Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus, 2004. 67
Literary responses	Olive Schreiner	The book elicited strong reactions, most of them positive. It was highly praised by Philip Kent , who wrote a long article about it instead of his usual shorter reviews in Life, a weekly...
Literary responses	Charlotte Yonge	The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen 's nephew James Austen-Leigh compared it to the work of Austen and Scott ...
Literary responses	Hesba Stretton	Calling the novel an offspring of a bold imagination, the Athenæum comments that it is written without labour or spurious ornament, and that certain scenes are very well described. Athenæum. J. Lection. 2046 (1867): 44 Other reviewers compared...
Literary responses	Isa Craig	One of the readers of the English Woman's Journal, Marian Lewes , wrote to its proprietor, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon , to say how deeply she had been affected by Infant Seamstresses. Supposing...
Literary responses	Charlotte Yonge	During her lifetime CY was ranked as a serious novelist with Austen , Trollope , Balzac , and Zola . Contemporaries like Louisa Alcott , Margaret Oliphant , Ellen Wood , and Rhoda Broughton made...
Literary responses	Harriet Beecher Stowe	Reviews were generally derogatory. The poet's admireres could not be swayed. George Eliot , with whom HBS had recently begun corresponding, suggested that she ought not to have brought the Byron question before the public...
Literary responses	Bessie Rayner Parkes	Leighton and Reynolds suggest that this poem, together with Barrett Browning 's Aurora Leigh, is one of the few bold attempts to tackle the woman question in verse and it is clearly influenced by...
Literary responses	Harriet Martineau	This book resulted in public outcry. Douglas Jerrold responded with wit: There is no God, and Harriet Martineau is his Prophet. qtd. in Webb, Robert Kiefer. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. Columbia University Press, 1960. 299 Mary Howitt came to regret her contribution to the most awful book that...
Literary responses	Pamela Hansford Johnson	This novel marked a step forward in the public valuation of PHJ . Walter Allen called it one of the best novels of our time. qtd. in Lindblad, Ishrat. Pamela Hansford Johnson. Twayne, 1982. 125 It reminded him of George Eliot : he praised...
Literary responses	Augusta Webster	The Athenæum declared the play would strengthen AW 's reputation as a dramatist, calling the dialogue intellectual and subtle. Athenæum. J. Lection. 2878 (1882): 841 But although the review conceded that Webster has not strangled poetic art...

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